Sometime in the 70s I went to a concert in Plymouth featuring a group from Brittany led by a certain Alan Stivell.
It was the period of folk-rock but even so the combination of Celtic harp and bagpipes, violin, accordion and a high-pitched oboe (the bombarde) along with electric guitars and drums was unusual and very exciting. Part of the excitement was the sense that something was going on behind the passion and conviction in the music. That something was Breton revivalism, then at its height. Much later at a fest-noz in Cleguerec I heard the mesmerising voice of Gilles Servat, then in his fifties, for the first time. These and other names, like the poet Xavier Grall, all led back to a shadowy figure called Glenmor who they claimed was their inspiration and mentor.
So who was Glenmor? The name, of course, was an adopted one, combining glen (valley and, by extension, land) and mor(sea). His real name was Milig(Emile) ar Skanv. He was born in June 1931, the son of peasant farmers, in the commune of Mael-Carhaix. At school he was forbidden to speak in Breton. This was the impoverished, downtrodden Brittany of the pre-war years, where at the entrance to rural schools was a sign which read: NO SPITTING, NO SPEAKING BRETON. Even as a child he smarted at the injustice of this situation and how it humiliated his non-French speaking father and thousands like him. However, he appears to have had a fairly conventional education with exam successes, followed by military service and a course in philosophy at the University of Rennes. There ensued a period in Paris where he wrote, acted, and developed his musical talents interspersed with travelling. It was in Belgium that he met his future wife Katell and the two of them spent some time together on the road gigging in an assortment of venues, a nomadic lifestyle that he never really abandoned, even after the couple went back to Brittany to live and raise two children.
Increasingly in songs, poems, articles, and political tracts he promoted the cause of Breton identity. He had a deep, powerful, rough-edged voice and a declamatory style that many find captivating, others tiresome. He said he felt that a concert was a success only if, afterwards, in the course of a long night of drinking with fans, he succeeded in converting at least one of them into a fervent Breton nationalist.
He even published a periodical, with Xavier Grall, for a couple of years entitled The Breton Nation. All this activity led to him being banned from the airwaves by a State fearful of Brittany developing a terrorist network like ETA or the IRA. In fact Basque terrorists were provided with safe houses, but Glenmor never espoused violence, and Breton insurgence never went beyond blowing up the radio masts on the Monts d’Arrée.
Predictably, when he bought a secluded manor house near Mellionnec, he alienated many of his supporters who accused him of profiting from the misery of his people. Others pointed out that the price would not have bought a studio flat in Paris. Further disenchantment followed as he sang and wrote more and more in French. He argued that to further the cause one had to use the language of the enemy, but that enemy was France not the French, by which he meant, presumably, a repressive centralising state.
Photos taken in his later years show him looking very much the celtic bard with long hair, wispy beard and penetrating eyes. He died in 1996 and was buried in the village of his birth. Thousands joined the funeral procession in a sea of black and white flags. On the simple headstone is written “et voici bien ma terre, la vallée de mes amours” (and here truly is my land, the valley of my loves).
Those who fell under the spell of Glenmor say that before him Brittany was considered a poor, backward place of superstition and strange customs, removed from the mainstream of French life, and that people felt ashamed to own up to their regional identity. After him, to be Breton born and bred became a source of pride. It is certainly true that any visitor to Brittany is soon aware of the vitality of the traditional music and dance scene and the reverence for the patrimoine of chapels and holy wells, the restored stone houses and the smartened-up villages, even while there are still pockets of deprivation and decay. At least some of this revival must originate in the life and work of Glenmor.
Article by Robert Thorpe. Published in the Central Brittany Journal June 2011
